I find it harder and harder these days to spend some time alone, in the quiet, without any distractions. With twitter, facebook, blogs, gchat, and all the other programs that keep us connected to the world, I can’t help but feel significantly more disconnected with myself and with God. I don’t blame technology, I can only look to myself and ask, “Why do I always resist doing the quite simple things that I know I ought to do.” If I can sit long enough to understand the reason for this resistance, I would find my way to a kind of self discovery…ultimately find my way back to the things that helps me to love God more and love people more.
Paul Tournier once said that listening to God goes beyond silence, where silence is no longer an end but a means of coming closer to God. Silence has the power to force us to dig deep inside ourselves, it involves restructuring of the person, which then leads to the discovery of underlying motives.
I don’t think I sit in silence long enough to see any of this. I know that if I do sit in silence long enough, it will bring to surface my sin, my guilt, my failure, and my lack of trust in God and that is scary. It’s scary because there’s a realization that there are a million other things I put before God. But in the process of all this there’s this underlying confidence that He will take my sin, erase my guilt, love me despite my failures, and beckon me to trust in Him more than anything else. It gives me hope.
Silence in the midst of crashing symbols is…hard.
Silence is waiting. And sometimes waiting is the hardest thing.
[thoughts inspired by Paul Tournier]
